Posted December 13, 20186 yr comment_5873027 His wife confirmed he passed away yesterday at the age of 90. Apparently he was still in good health recently. Without a debut the greatest swiss wrestler of all time and very important in europe. He made a big impression on Regal and helped train Cesaro. Still hoping more of his french TV work from his prime shows up. It seems Lasartesse/Duranton vs. Drapp/Vignal is no longer online... hopefully somebody saved it
December 13, 20186 yr comment_5873038 5 hours ago, Jetlag said: (...) and helped train Cesaro. Is that true? I don't think Lasartesse was involved with the Swiss Wrestling Federation (where CC initially got trained, though I am sure he attended lots of training sessions in Germany early on) which to me always looked like it was mostly guys training themselves (I assume under the guidenance of some guys who had some ring experience) with the occasional training sessions by some Germans wrestlers and later US guys. I know that Lasartesse was attending a training or two (I remember a Chris Hero interview where he mentioned him), but I don't think he was involved with training itself. For those speaking (Swiss-)German here is short report on him from Swiss television from 2012: https://www.srf.ch/play/tv/sportlounge/video/der-basler-koenig-des-catch---ein-leben-mit-privatjet-und-anabolika-vor-50-jahren?id=c3eafc73-f6d8-4518-b9ae-5747710dbda8&station=69e8ac16-4327-4af4-b873-fd5cd6e895a7 Besides some clips from 60ies and 70ies wrestling he also talks about taking steroids for some time while he was working in the US.
December 13, 20186 yr Author comment_5873040 I distinctly remember reading that Lasartesse was vocal about the guys doing lots of cardio because he felt every match should go around 20 minutes. I'm pretty sure Regal and Cesaro did a spot in their match that was lifted straight from Lasartesse/Van Buyten. But on the other hand, I also remember a story that Lasartesse training Franz Schumann was mostly him making Schumann do back bumps till he couldn't move anymore. Also Kretschmer mentioned Lasartesse didn't train anyone in his class and instead it was one of the referees, Benesch (?).
December 20, 20186 yr comment_5873614 One of the great European heels. Another guy who enriched my wrestling experience. Hopefully, we get more footage of him in the years to come.
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